Thanks for clarifying. I thought you meant that you would change Duration, I had forgotten about the Max active games setting.
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For those that have run Max MP with a constrained # of pins (more players playing than 2x the # of pins), by a fair margin… has anyone noticed an optimum % of empty pins before creating more matches?
If you have substantially more players than 2x the pins (e.g. 60 players for 15 pins), then I think you could start matches pretty frequently. My thought process here is that while the next selected arena might not be too random, the player pairings will feel very random with a big waiting list. I’d try out having at least 3 pins available so that there’s still some randomness in which machine the new pairings get. With a large number of players in the waiting list, I think it’s unlikely that someone who just finished their match will get repaired right away, so the chance of them getting a repeat game is lower.
If you are closer to 2:1 (e.g. 25 players for 10 pins) then I think you want to aim to have about half of the pins available before starting the next set of games. With fewer available pins you run the risk of a player repeatedly getting assigned to the same game. Obviously every time they’re in the waiting list their previous game is one of the available options so they’re more likely to get it.
Every time that I’ve gone into a tournament with a clear plan of when to start matches it always seems like the general chaos of TD’ing leads to me departing from that plan and waiting longer when I feel like I have to (for a player who is falling behind) or delaying because I got busy with a call or long ball or going faster than I had planned (because someone didn’t get paired the last time I clicked the button due to having already played the other waiting list players at the time and they’ve now been in the waiting list for 10 minutes and are getting antsy so I click the button again with only an arena or two available).
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24 players to 18 pins (link)
This one hit the problem where a very good player got a few games behind and we intentionally held off on creating games so that they didn’t get stuck. If I had noticed it earlier it would have had a smaller impact.
31 players to 12 pins (link)
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Is there an option in there to have Max MP auto-trigger “Create Games” when the # of empty available games = X?
(which you would then disable after you got further into the tourney, in case one player was falling behind)
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Nope
@Snailman here’s one more view of that second tournament with 31 players and 12 pins.
We started out kicking off games any time there were 3 or 4 machines available. After about an hour and a half that creeped up to starting matches when there were 5 to 7 machines available. I was out of town for this tournament and had someone guest TDing for me, so I can’t provide much other context.
This qualifying phase was 13.3% TGP per hour. The group match play tournaments and fair strikes tournaments that I run with the same players and machines gets 15% to 18% TGP per hour. A year ago I ran two flip frenzies on similar machines and with a somewhat less skilled player base for 20% to 24% TGP per hour (v5.7 rules).
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Thanks so much for the feedback and charts!
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I wouldn’t be using it without it being a round robin and I doubt everyone else would get that far ahead if someone pops to the toilet or has a smoking break.
The create games button would continue to work like it does when a player falls behind. I’ve done a few tests where I’ve put a new player in when everyone else has hit 10 games played, in a 25 game max Matchplay. The new player is able to catch up quite easily due to how it pairs people.
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Just that it is the best head 2 head format at the moment. Fast, fair (since you can make repeat opponents less of a thing,) and fun. Just a perfect blend of old head2head matchplay and flip frenzy. The logistical issues are not as big as you think.
Just add time for 1 player to leave early. And if your normal participants are super casual players who get bored quickly (or super try hards who leave if they sniff a chance that they can’t make finals) then skip this format
I would say that this format and Amazing Race has made running tournaments a lot more fun.
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(Moved the Max MP talk to a separate thread since it was getting a little involved)
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Thanks again… question on how many “peak” Active Games at Start Time you had… you had 12 pins, and it was always peaking at 10 games, max. Was that intentional to not have all 12 pins active at the moment that new games are created?
Or was this an issue where 2 pins were deactivated for malfunctions, etc?
We didn’t limit the number of pins. We started with 10 arenas and quickly realized that the tournament would run better with more pins so we bumped that number up to 12 and started more games. I think what you were seeing was just a misleading chart. That original chart was saying that there were never more than 10 games already running when we clicked the create games button (in effect, aways creating at least 2 games to get the total number of active games back up to 12).
Here’s a new chart from that same tournament that does a better job of showing arena usage.
Notice that we started new games really rapidly at first. We kicked off one or two games at a time as soon as the arenas became available because we started the tournament with 10 games at 12:08 with 20 players playing and 11 waiting. We added two more arenas as quickly as we could to get to a total of 24 players playing, but there were still 7 players who hadn’t even started their first game by 12:20. So we wanted to just start games as quickly as possible in the beginning. After that we shifted to starting games when there were 3 or 4 arenas available.
And just for fun, here’s one more that shows how much time each player spent playing vs waiting. (X axis is just a value for each of the 31 players.)
Most players spent between 55% to 70% of the time playing matches and the rest of their time waiting. We had 2 machines for every 5 players. If you’re more imbalanced than that, keep in mind that there will be more waiting time.
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We have nine pins, and when we have three empty pins then a TD hits the button. Two empty pins is too few and results in more repeated arenas for an individual. I’ll also look around the room and if I see a game or two close to ending I’ll wait another 30-60 seconds before drawing since that will increase the number of players.
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thank you @coreyhulse and @tommyv …
At the beginning of the tourney, I think I’ll Create Games as soon as two pins are available, for X number of times, where X = [# of players starting out the tourney in the Waiting Room] / 4.
And once we’ve Created Games X number of times, then I’ll transition to waiting until 3 pins are available, per Corey’s input.
Thanks again!
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Apparently there’s an issue if you let players get too far behind in number of matches where they won’t be able to play their final matches as they’ve already played all their potential partners
I ran a Max Matchplay this week with no issues. I had 24 players. I started every time the queue hit 8 players - unless someone was starting to lag behind by a couple rounds, then I waited for them to finish their match before I started the next match. We got through 7 rounds in just under 2 hours, then had a final.
I only had 2 software gripes:
When players have finished their final match, they are added to the count for queued players, which is a little confusing.
While the “predictions” tab is a cool idea, I wish it was hidden from the players. I think it can motivate players that are far behind to quit (or at least emotionally quit).
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If that happens you just manually assign a match. This format doesn’t guarantee you will have repeats but it does a good job. I’ve run it 2 times, once with no repeats and once the final match was a repeat.
Most of the discussion of max Matchplay is around picking a number of rounds. Has anyone tried it as a round robin in the real world yet?
We’ve got our max Matchplay coming up in two weeks. 26 players, set to 25 games played.
We’re used to running flip frenzies and can’t wait to finally try the new format for real. I’m a little anxious about the creating of new games and how much it will slow down towards the end when it has to wait for people to complete all the pairings.
We’re allocating 4-1/2hrs. 12 arenas and max of 10 in use at once, but will adjust if needed.
Hopefully it completes in the allotted time. With a flip frenzy we had 4hrs and some players hit 26 games played.
I can see there being a lot of ties by the end.
Used it for round robins (and double round robins) a few times. Super smooth and more efficient than using the normal way of playing round robin in rounds.